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Monday, August 31, 2009

Chicken Breasts with Mushrooms & Cream

***WARNING: If you make this dish, you may be tempted to lick the remaining sauce from the pan! The mushroom and cream sauce that smothers the chicken breasts in this recipe is so divine. I found this in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I. She never fails to impress me (as you can probably tell from the numerous Julia recipes I've been blogging about lately!)

Just think...cream, mushrooms and butter...Mmm....sauces don't get much better than that, folks! It's creamy, luxurious and satisfying...all at the same time.

Furthermore, the way that the chicken breasts are prepared produces incredibly tender and moist chicken. Because I used my Le Creuset dutch oven, I did not follow Julia's suggestion of covering the chicken with a piece of buttered wax paper (gasp!). I simply covered the dutch oven with the heavy lid and popped it into the oven. The results were fantastic!

I served this chicken with asparagus...perfection! Brad and I both are looking forward to having this dish again!***

Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons

(Chicken Breasts with Mushroom and Cream)

Source: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck (Knopf, 1961)

Ingredients:

4 supremes (boneless, skinless chicken breasts)

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

Big pinch white pepper

5 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon minced shallot or green onion

1/4 pound diced or sliced fresh mushrooms

1/8 teaspoon salt

For the sauce:

1/4 cup white or brown stock or canned beef bouillon

1/4 cup port, Madeira or dry white vermouth

1 cup whipping cream

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons freshly minced parsley

Directions:Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Rub the chicken breasts with drops of lemon juice and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Heat the butter in a heavy, oven-proof casserole, about 10 inches in diameter until it is foaming. Stir in the minced shallots or green onion and saute a moment without browning. Then stir in the mushrooms and saute lightly for a minute or two without browning. Sprinkle with salt.

Quickly roll the chicken in the butter mixture and lay a piece of buttered wax paper over them, cover casserole and place in hot oven. After 6 minutes, press top of chicken with your finger. If still soft, return to oven for a moment or two. When the meat is springy to the touch it is done. (Please Note: Although Julia suggests to check the chicken after only 6 minutes, I (as well as several of my readers!) feel that this amount of time is inadequate to thoroughly cook the chicken. I cooked it for closer to 30-40 minutes. Please use a meat thermometer to ensure the correct temperature before serving!)

Remove the chicken to a warm platter (leave mushrooms in the pot) and cover while making the sauce (2 to 3 minutes).

To make sauce, pour the stock and wine in the casserole with the cooking butter and mushrooms. Boil down quickly over high heat until liquid is syrupy. Stir in the cream and boil down again over high heat until cream has thickened slightly. Off heat, taste for seasoning, and add drops of lemon juice to taste. Pour the sauce over the chicken, sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately.

Hello cspurlock and Anonymous - Thank you so much for your comments! The cooking times are actually correct...I included the exact recipe from Julia's book. She says to check the chicken after 6 minutes and return to the oven if not cooked through. However, I definitely agree with you both...I ended up cooking the chicken closer to maybe 30-40 minutes and used a meat thermometer to ensure the correct temp...the idea of raw chicken always makes me nervous!

Hi There! I really like your blog! I did not pan sear the chicken before putting it into the oven. If you have a Dutch Oven, I would recommend using it for this recipe. Simply roll the chicken in the butter/shallot/mushroom mixture until it's coated well with the butter...then, place immediately into the oven.

Thxs for correcting the recipe. I guess the typo is on Julia's part. Her book was written by a "Master-chef" so to speak & in the era before computers, spell & grammer check. I just didn't understand how after 6min of cooking chicken could be done to perfection. It's the way the recipe is read. However, we did enjoy the dish immensely, but my dish didn't compare in the rich creaminess as yours did. I used cremini mushrooms instead of button & the sauce was a dark rich brown instead of light yellow. Nevertheless the recipe turned out fabulous & my dear sweet husband nearly licked the pan clean. LOL!

cpurlock - I'm SO glad that you tried the recipe and loved it!! I wasn't kidding about licking the sauce from the pan...LOL...it really is THAT good! Thanks so much for posting about your results and for reading my blog!! :) :) :)

Just discovered your blog and love it!Invested in both volumes of Julia's books, after seeing the movie. I made this tonight with port - YUM - and heavy whipping cream - YUM - as Julia recommends. Plain old white mushrooms. The chicken breasts were rather large and thick and were in the oven for 35-40 minutes and were done perfectly and very moist. I'm thinking Julia's were much thinner, thus the six minutes or so. I doubt she ate raw chicken!! The port made the sauce a lovely color! And the taste - oh my! What can I say??? Served over linguini. Oh my ---- Thank you for your blog!! It is now on my toolbar Celeste!!

I have recently turned my love of cooking into an obsession. I saw this dish first in Julie & Julia and it looked amazing. I will soon be testing out this recipe before my husband comes home from Iraq. I am sure he will loooove this dish.

oh my god!! The most incredible chicken dish ever! My children hate, and i mean HATE mushrooms, but they were both fighting over who was going to lick out the pan at the end of the meal. Julia Child is a food God!!

I have made this twice, and it was delicious both times. The first time I cooked the chicken breast about 30 minutes because, like all the others here, I knew 6 minutes was too little. However, I got to thinking. What if Julia had flattened her chicken breasts? So, I pounded them to 1/4 inch thick, and the timing in the recipe was perfect. I have to wonder if that part was left out of the recipe. It does speed things up a bit, plus you get to take any stress or frustration out on the chicken breasts. They tasted even better and were more tender than when I did not flatten them.

Thanks so much for posting the original recipe! I read the book Julie/Julia and NEEDED to try the recipe- I've always loved mushrooms with cream, and this is a great way to cook them! I cooked mine in a cast iron skillet on the stovetop, on low (with wax paper and lid), for about 20 minutes and it turned out great. The chicken cooks faster with the direct heat, I think. Still not 6 minutes, but it is faster than in the oven.

hey...could you please write down the way you prepaired the asparagus too? i'd be very thankful to you :)... i've been mouthwatering since the very first time i saw this picture on your blog...it looks awesome....and more awesome to see that you were right about this dish...i have just done it last weekend and i just couldn't resist the tempation to lick the spoon i've been 'cooking' with :)))))))))

Hi, there!I just thought I would add a comment about the chicken, considering that I've been researching the heck out of the recipe. The reason that the recipe states the cook time as only 6 minutes is because Julia used chicken breast cutlets, instead of an entire chicken bread half like we normally think of and use. But, I'm glad that you told us the cooking time for an entire chicken breast half. :-)I hope this helps to clear up any confusion!

I'm a new cook so I find this to be a bit confusing... do you heat the butter on the stove top in your casserole dish? And was the sauce cooked on the stove top as well? More detailed step by step instructions (with pictures) would be amazingly helpful for those of us who can't cook :)

I have a garden party on Saturday for thirty and wondered if this could be cooked the day before ? Maybe heated through and the cream added before serving? Do you think that would work? Any thought really appreciated.

Thanks to everyone for your comments!! In response to some of your questions/comments:

Anonymous - The recommended cooking time for a boneless chicken breast varies anywhere from 25 - 45 minutes, depending mostly on the size of the chicken breast, and if it's boneless or bone-in.

Please note - Julia's original recipe was based on chicken cutlets, which cook MUCH faster than chicken breasts. Boneless chicken breasts must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F to be considered safe. Salmonella poisoning is no fun!

Maggie - If you're going to make this dish ahead of time, I would probably get all of the chicken to the point where it's cooked through, but then wait to actually add the cream/make the sauce on the day you plan to serve it. My only hesitation is whether or not the cream sauce would start to separate if made too early. This dish should be a huge hit at your party! :)

Anonymous - Yes, the butter is heated on a stove top. A large dutch oven is the best kind of pot to use for this recipe. If using a cast iron dutch oven, that will eliminate the need to cover the chicken with wax paper, because the heavy lid will hold in all the moisture while the chicken is cooking. The shallots and mushrooms are sauted in the butter on top of the stove. Next, the chicken breasts are added and cooked in the oven (using the same pot). The final step will be making the sauce on the stove top. I hope this helps! :)

Soaked chicken breasts in lemon juice for a few minutes (And seasoned while they were in there) while heating the butter in a skillet and cooking the green onion and mushroom. I added the chicken (and a tiny bit of the lemon juice), covered it and let it cook on medium high, flipping the chicken until cooked through and a nice golden brown.

These are the changes I made: I pounded the chicken breasts a bit to make them cook faster (maybe 1/2 inch thick). I used a regular onion and some garlic to replace the shallots since I had them on hand. I also simmered it on the stove instead of baking it. Then when the chicken was just a touch under-cooked, I pulled them out and wrapped them tightly in a double-thick aluminum foil. By the time the sauce was finished, the chicken was perfectly cooked in the foil. I added some dried parsley into the sauce and finished the top with some chopped chives. Just amazing!!!

The comment someone made about this tasting the same as cream of mushroom soup is laughable.. this recipe is incredible! I served the chicken over egg noodles with a side of steamed green beans... Thank you for posting this recipe!

Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe. I never thought I could cook a Julia Child recipe but I did and it was fantastic. The sauce here is so good it makes up for any flaws of the cook, like overcooking the chicken. Be sure and read the comments about the timing of the chicken. Mine took 20 minutes but I wasn't ready to start the sauce so it rested too long. I also used my covered skillet, just made more sense to me going back and forth from the stovetop and the oven and I used chicken stock, not beef. Bon Appetit!

So, I'm without my own cooking things because we are the middle of a weird Army move. So no dutch oven, at least no cast iron one.

What I did was I sauteed the first part in a wok, then put it over the chicken in a pot thing that desperately wishes was a dutch oven. Cooked for 30 minutes at 400, and then took the chicken out and wrapped it tightly in foil. Poured the onion/mushroom/butter mixture BACK into the wok and followed the next steps. Put the chicken back into the dutch oven-poser, poured the sauce in.

Oh my goodness! This is so easy and so yummy! Unbelievably good. I cooked my breasts for about 35 minutes and then let them rest, covered with foil and they were perfectly cooked yet still moist. The sauce is divine! I served the chicken with a side of green beans sauteed in bacon grease and diced onion. Thank you for sharing this recipe! I love Julia and French food! :)

Just made this tonight, exactly as written, using chicken stock and vermouth. Absolutely mouth watering! My chicken cooked through in 20 min and it was fork tender. Perfection. Love love love!!! Thanks for sharing this recipe :)

I made this tonight and used sherry instead of port...wow! It's an instant family favorite. My husband had three servings. The chicken was moist and the sauce was out of this world. Best part? I made it in under 30 mins! It's perfect for company or a lazy Sunday dinner. Try this!

I stumbled upon this recipe some time ago on Sugar & Spice by Celest and it has been a huge hit at my house... Even with the picky eaters! I use a local-made white wine and it turns out phenomenally

I recently wanted to do something new for some guests that I was having over, and I made the sauce (with the scallions and mushrooms included) and poured them over sliced potatoes and onions that I had baked. I broiled the mixture for just under 5 minutes on high and created some "scalloped" potatoes that are now famous in my household! Mmmm!

I made this last night and it turned out wonderfully. Next time I will add more mushrooms (portobello) and I will make a roux to thicken up the sauce, it was creamy (as in rich) but not thick (as in creamy). This was the first time I actually splurged on white pepper.As for 6 minute cooked chicken - back in the day, chicken had to be boned by the cook or requested to be done at a butcher. Most woman (my grandma) pounded the chicken thin for a quicker and juicer chicken. Woman/Cooks were not spoiled like we are today with high end ovens and stoves.

I just made this recipe for my mum's birthday tonight and I just had to comment and say it was FANTASTIC! I've never commented on a recipe I've made before but I just had to thank you! My mum ate almost twice the amount she usually does and absolutely adored it! I followed the recipe exactly (chose port and beef stock for sauce, and cooked chicken for about 30 minutes) and it was absolutely divine! I'll be making this again many times! The sauce thickened to the perfect consistency and as soon as I tasted it I was actually surprised at just how amazing the flavour was! I paired it with a simple mushroom risotto and asparagus - thanks again

Hi all,Vis a vis the cooking time, keep in mind when Julia was cooking and writing....chicken breasts then were a lot smaller than they are now, probably 100-120 grams; these days some of the breasts I buy are as big as a kitten!Cheers.

I've made this dish. I love this Julia Child cookbook and recipe. There's no way you should cook a boneless chicken breast more than 10 minutes. If you do it'll be like shoe leather, completely overdone and without any juices at all. Just awful. You must be thinking of bone-in chicken breasts which can be baked or roasted up to an hour and still be palatable. Experiment with boneless chicken breasts. Heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium heat (medium low over gas heat). Salt and pepper the boneless breasts (supremes) and sauté them in the pan for 5 minutes per side. Then serve immediately. Perfect, if not a little overdone. Follow Julia Child's instructions in this recipe. There's a reason she's a legend. She didn't serve raw chicken to anyone. It's not like it's was "in" in the olden days.

Making it now!! :)) Has anyone ever used Vermouth?? I thought strongly on using instead of wine. Just for something different. Also it was very hard not to brown the chicken breasts. Looking at the picture there was no browning.

Thank you for sharing this. It really was as delicious as you said. We made it with Marsala, because I didn't have any vermouth left (shameful, I know). Kid approved, PICKY KID approved and husband approved. Thank you- so delicious! I wish I would have doubled the sauce.